Un Chien Reaction

Earlier on today I finished a shamble that ended somewhere different to where I imagined it would when I first started constructing it. Namely, this week’s fall in the Dow and Shake Sphere’s Marc Anthony quote…

“Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the Dogs Of War.”

Julius Caesar: Act 3, Scene 1, line 273

… And I’d seen reference to Julius Caesar just the day before…

Okay then, Dear Reader… Let’s cry…

early 15c., from the expression cry havoc “give the signal to pillage” (Anglo-French crier havok, late 14c.). Havok, the signal to soldiers to seize plunder, is from Old French havot “pillaging, looting” (in crier havot), which is related to haver “to seize, grasp,” hef “hook,” probably from a Germanic source (see hawk (n.)), or from Latin habere “to have, possess.” General sense of “devastation” first recorded late 15c.

c. 1300, hauk, earlier havek (c. 1200), from Old English hafoc (West Saxon), heafuc (Mercian), heafoc, “hawk,” from Proto-Germanic *habukaz (source also of Old Norse haukr, Old Saxon habuc, Middle Dutch havik, Old High German habuh, German Habicht“hawk”), from PIE root *kap-“to grasp” (source also of Russian kobec“a kind of falcon”). Transferred sense of “militarist” attested from 1956, probably based on its opposite, dove.

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.